The study was published Wednesday in the journal
Behavioral Sciences and the Law, and suggests that current
measures to stop people with diagnosed mental illnesses from
owning firearms are nothing approaching sufficient.

The researchers from Harvard, Columbia and Duke Universities
conducted 5,563 face-to-face interviews in nationwide survey
looking at mental disorders that stretched back to the early
2000s.

The authors of the study claim this is the first time that a link
has been found between gun ownership and angry impulsive
behavior, not necessarily a diagnosable mental illness.

“Impulsive, out of control, destructive, harmful. You and I
might shout. These individuals break and smash things and get
into physical fights, punch someone in the nose," lead
author Jeffrey Swanson of Duke University told the Washington
Post.

In 2012, 11,622 people were killed by guns in an intentional
violent act and 57,077 were injured. While mass shootings like
Sandy Hook and Aurora have focused lawmakers’ attention on
keeping mentally ill people away from guns, the study shows that
much more needs to be done to reduce the shockingly high death
rates in the US from personal firearms.

The research also indicates that guns are disproportionately
owned by angry people who also have a habit of keeping their guns
close at hand and taking their guns with them outside the home.

Swanson said the classic angry man with a gun is married and
lives in a suburban area. In an op-ed on the subject he referred
to man from North Carolina who had scared his neighbors with his
outbursts of rage, owned 14 guns, and shot and killed three
Muslim students earlier in this year.

Swanson believes that more attention must be given to stopping
dangerous people getting hold of guns.

“We can’t broadly limit legal access to guns, so we have to
focus on the dangerous people,” he said, in comments that
will likely delight the pro-gun lobby.

But although someone’s behavior may be suspect there is often
nothing in their medical histories that would bar them from
buying a firearm.

“The traditional legal approach has been to prohibit firearms
from involuntarily committed psychiatric patients. But now we
have more evidence that current laws don’t necessarily keep
firearms out of the hands of a lot of potentially dangerous
individuals,” Swanson said.

Federal US law limits gun access of anyone convicted of a crime,
and for people with domestic violence convictions.

Swanson and his colleagues believe the law should be extended to
cover people with alcohol problems, people who have made open
threats in the past and anyone with a single misdemeanor
conviction.